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In that case you are pulling a fallacy by association then. Spore and similar DRM like systems were mainly criticised because of their spyware like approach and the threat this signified to privacy and the such. Having to connect to the net, while certainly a problem by itself, is a different one altogether not related to the main issue and problems proper DRM has attracted.

Having clarified that, yes, I agree with you on the Internet point, as we have discussed before, but I don't really see why do you make such a fuss of it. As we have said, it is not really a big exchange of information, it is just an authentication ping, so for all purposes a bare minimum Internet connection would do, which would be the only real problem.

I don't consider it a snub out at all. Also it might just be me, but I don't understand the real appeal of lan parties anymore, especially not for computer games. Are you really going to have multiple people bring over their computers and set them up just to play on a lan set up?I mean everyone could just hop on the internet and home or something and play like that if its just pcs. With ventrilo and other online chat services, you might miss out on yay party atmosphere but thats about it. If not and instead they are bringing their laptops and something, then they should have internet recievers for them anyway. I don't know it honestly seems like a pretty fair trade off to me for trying to stop some amount of the piracy that is likely to happen regardless.

The scene is changing somewhat, now. These days people have laptops for gaming (or laptops that can handle modern games at all - that's a big change from how it used to be), and wireless has made connectivity a fair bit easier. This may really be a non-issue given the current state of technology. It would have been an issue for me and my friends all those years ago, even though we all had legal copies of StarCraft. It just seems consumer-unfriendly, particularly given that the feature wouldn't be that difficult to implement and all.

As for LAN party vs. internet play - there's a big difference, unless your friends get really quiet when they're gaming and just type back and forth to each other. Then there's really not much of a difference, I'd agree. Also, for my group of friends, at least, first-person shooter games were also a lot more fun than strategy games.

That aside, will this really be an effective anti-piracy measure? It's true that at LAN parties games are swapped around between people's systems. But if people just find out that they can't play Starcraft together because the online system won't let them, I'd imagine that they'd just not play Starcraft and would move on to the next game. At that point Starcraft is already on another person's system, so piracy hasn't exactly been thwarted. You've just prevented people from playing the game a bit.

The point is valid, however the issue here is what is the percentage of people who first acquired the game through illegal means, only to later like it and finally purchase a legal copy. This article I quoted earlier may indicate the percentage is not large enough after all.

I can second that article from personal experience. During my four years of school, several games made it round the class. Only a handful of them were bought at all prior to going around the class, much less after.

I can second that article from personal experience. During my four years of school, several games made it round the class. Only a handful of them were bought at all prior to going around the class, much less after.

uh if they were passed around, they could have just as easily been downloaded, hell I've lent my friends games like COD4 and I have no qualms because i purchased it and if my friend wants to try it out why not?

Well I mean this game says i can't lend my games without giving them my personal information and my entire library, which does seem a bit paranoid on blizzards part. Plus its like microsoft needing you to verify the person next to you about to play splitscreen also owns a copy of the game, which would be just ridiculous

uh if they were passed around, they could have just as easily been downloaded, hell I've lent my friends games like COD4 and I have no qualms because i purchased it and if my friend wants to try it out why not?

As Proto pointed out, none of us actually purchased the games we played. What we did was a blatant violation of copyright, and the only reason we got away with it was because we used a LAN to do play those games.

I do not fault Blizzard for taking precautions against these kinds of things. You can say not having such protection it didn't hurt Starcraft, but times have changed. Starcraft was born in a time where pirating of games was but a minor inconvenience at best. These days people can -and will- download games before they are even launched. Preventing scenarios like mine is a simple step in insuring a more stable profit, which any company needs to keep afloat. Even Blizzard. WoW may give them a huge budget, but that budget is not infinite, unlike what some people like to believe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nosauz

Well I mean this game says i can't lend my games without giving them my personal information and my entire library, which does seem a bit paranoid on blizzards part. Plus its like microsoft needing you to verify the person next to you about to play splitscreen also owns a copy of the game, which would be just ridiculous

Huh? Last I checked all Blizzard's DRM did was a simple install ping.
"In order to install the game, “you need to connect once to install the game,” StarCraft II lead designer Browder revealed. A player will also either have or sign up for a Battle.net account during the installation process."

Though yes, if you mean that you can't lend a game without giving your friend your Battle.net account, you're right. And by all means they should. If your friend wants to try the game, have him try it at your place. If your friend wants to play the game, he's going to have to pay like everyone else.

Though yes, if you mean that you can't lend a game without giving your friend your Battle.net account, you're right. And by all means they should. If your friend wants to try the game, have him try it at your place. If your friend wants to play the game, he's going to have to pay like everyone else.

Hardly anything unfair about that.

Basically, the argument is either, "I hate copy/piracy protection in any form, since it does nothing," or, "What if I have LAN but no internet?"

Could you play LAN games on spawn installs of Starcraft? Maybe they'll do something like that this time too.

Yes, but if you only need a moment of internet verification to install the game, I don't see how this should affect LAN games... I mean by all accounts everybody should have their own copy installed and ready when the party begins, right?

the thing is it doesn't just ping during the install, it pings while you play, and they haven't said how frequiently, but you have to be online to use their "psuedo lan" feature which again is not as benign as you make it out to be

the thing is it doesn't just ping during the install, it pings while you play, and they haven't said how frequiently, but you have to be online to use their "psuedo lan" feature which again is not as benign as you make it out to be

Too true... one of Starcraft's biggest draws was how awesomely versatile the map editor was *fondly remembers all the UMS installation maps he made with working door and trap triggers*, playing through a campaign is one thing, creating your own is just sheer bliss

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uh keroko, to use the psuedo lan your bnet account has to be logged in, its pretty obvious this would require an internet connection unless there's been a new to send and receive data packets? I just find locking certain features behind "login" services especially one that is pretty much a staple in RTS's and generally most PC games to be quite stupid. I mean pirates are still going to pirate this game, even if you had encrypted every strand of game data, and the only way to play was verify the cd key with some server to then drop unencrypted needed files to your system, people would still pirate, the only thing these "services" as Blizzard likes to call them, is hurt the honest customer far more than the pirate.

Last edited by Nosauz; 2009-08-27 at 08:35.
Reason: because I can't type

I also was searching for some more info about the DRM and all I could find were articles about "you need to connect to b-net during installation."

And these "services" Blizzard gives with playing online are saving your game on the blizzard server, archivements and unlockabels (like avatars in the game lobby). It's not really something, you need to enjoy the game, you still can save on your HD.

As I said, the way it is now is more like Valve's Steam, and they still can redesign the LAN modus into a real one, not that I would really need one.